Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge

by H. Pauer-Studer, J. Velleman

Overview

Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge is a moral biography of Georg Konrad Morgen, who prosecuted crimes committed by members of the SS in Nazi concentration camps and eventually came face-to-face with the system of industrialized murder at Auschwitz. His wartime papers and postwar testimonies yield a study in moral complexity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349505043
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	05/07/2015
Edition description:	1st ed. 2015
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Herlinde Pauer-Studer is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has held fellowships from the Austrian Academy of Science and Fulbright; from 2010-21015 she held an Advanced Research Grant from the European Research Council.

J. David Velleman is a Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics at New York University, USA. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Timeline People in the Book Map of the German Reich and Polish Territories Acknowledgments Preface 1. Introduction 2. The SS Man 3. The SS Judiciary 4. Criminals and Spies 5. The Criminal Character 6. Karl-Otto Koch 7. From Corruption to Murder 8. Partners in Crime 9. 'Legal' Killing 10. The Final Solution: Conflicting Stories 11. Aktion Erntefest 12. KL Auschwitz 13. Adolf Eichmann 14. The Weimar Trials 15. Rudolf Hoess and Eleonore Hodys 16. Out of the Fray 17. Postscript Appendix 1. List of Sources Appendix 2. Documents Appendix 3. Photos

Editorial Reviews

"Konrad Morgen: Conscience of a Nazi Judge is the complex make-up of his rationale, all the grey areas of his humanity. People like Morgen do the right things for the wrong reasons, they hold essentially honourable principles which are nevertheless capable of being warped by the prevailing doctrines of their times." - The Jewish Chronicle

"Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge is a scrupulous and gripping account by two philosophers­­ an Austrian and American of the confrontation of dilemmas of moral and legal philosophy by an actual person, a person not better or worse than any of us, in circumstances so unimaginably extreme that we may all hope never to have to encounter them. No hypotheticals concocted by clever academics to illustrate their ruminations on these abstractions could come close to the reality recounted here in meticulous detail, verified by unarguable documentation." - The New Rambler

"Through the words of Morgen himself, artfully intertwined with the two authors' analysis, we pick up on a character whose unswerving faith in justice led him to an untenable position that was revelaing of the utter uncompatibility of the Nazi principles and that which we cling on to in such cases: sheer humanity." - San Francisco Book Review

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